Chris Van Hollen

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I voted against the motion to table Senator Paul's amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act not because I support his amendment as written, but because I believe this Senate has a responsibility to fully debate the question of our policy, strategy and plans for Afghanistan. Tabling an amendment cuts off all debate on this important matter. We should not be ducking these decisions. We should confront our policy directly, take stock of where we are, and set a responsible course for the future. I strongly support ending the war in Afghanistan and the responsible withdrawal of our men and women in uniform. However, I believe that mandating the total unconditional withdrawal on a 1-year timeline will result in the further destabilization of an already volatile region. Unconditional withdrawal divorced from a diplomatic process to achieve political reconciliation between the warring parties will make it harder to achieve a peaceful outcome that serves our national security interests. Despite my disagreement with much of the substance of the Paul amendment, the Senate should deliberate on these matters, not run away from the discussion. The decision to table the Paul amendment prevented the Senate from performing this essential function.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Reserving the right to object, I believe that we may have this worked out so there may not be an objection, but I just want to say a few words before I proceed with this unanimous consent request. As the gentleman from Missouri said, he was on the floor of the Senate last week proposing a Senate resolution condemning the actions of China with respect to Hong Kong. I said then and I say again now, I fully agree with his assessment. What the Government of China is doing in Hong Kong is unacceptable. They are taking away the rights of the people in Hong Kong. They are snuffing out the freedoms that exist there right now. Since we were on the floor last week, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress reportedly reviewed an initial draft of the national security law, which has not been released. So even in this last week, they are moving forward in their process to take away the liberties of the people of Hong Kong. Time is of the essence. What I said on the floor last week and what I will say again today is that passage of a Senate resolution is not going to deter the actions of the Government of China. It is a statement. It is an important statement by the Senate. But to believe that the Government of China will be deterred one wit in moving forward on the path that it is on to take away the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong is to not be even paying attention to what is happening in Beijing. I heard the Senator from Missouri say: ``Actions have consequences.'' I agree they should. From the perspective of the Government of China passing a Senate resolution as a consequence to their action is hardly going to be taken seriously in Beijing. That is why it is important to actually do something that shows that the Government of China will pay a price if it continues down this path to extinguish those freedoms of the people of Hong Kong. That is exactly why, right after the Government of China headed down this path, Senator Toomey, who is here with us on the floor, and I introduced a piece of legislation that would have consequences, that would actually punish the government of China if it continues down this path. It establishes a set of mandatory sanctions. It requires the administration to identify all those individuals who are culpable and complicit in taking away the rights of the people in Hong Kong. And more than that, it would sanction those banks that allow those individuals to do business. That is an action that does have consequences. That is an action where at least there is a chance that the Government of China will listen because they understand it is not just a statement by the U.S. Senate. They understand that it is a statement with penalties. Now, let me make clear that in order for this legislation to be effective, eventually, the administration is going to have to follow the law, and it is going to have to impose the sanctions on those individuals who are responsible. I would be remiss or negligent if I didn't point out that the administration currently has authority to impose sanctions against China for its actions in Hong Kong based on legislation that this body passed last year to uphold the rights--the human rights and the democratic rights--of the people of Hong Kong. So, despite some statements from the Secretary of State, this administration has still taken no action. Now, this legislation that Senator Toomey and I have proposed--and I really want to thank the Senator and salute him for his leadership on this. We have worked together in the past on sanctions that have been adopted into law with respect to North Korea, and I think it is important that we work on a bipartisan basis to take action that is meaningful here in the Senate. The administration should act now on their existing authority. The Senate and the House should pass this legislation, the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, as amended, here today and send it to the White House. The President, we hope, would sign it, and then we hope the President would impose the expanded sanctions that are provided for in the Hong Kong Autonomy Act. That is doing something that demonstrates to the Government of China that consequences have action, and that is why it was discouraging last week when we proposed this and we had a Senator come to the floor and block it. I agree with the Senator from Missouri--it would have been great to pass this last week--but a Senator came to the floor to block it even though that Senator was a cosponsor of this legislation. When asked why he did it, he said he blocked it at the behest of the White House. That is what he said. I am hoping that is not the case today. I am hoping that today we don't, at the last minute, have a Senator, at the behest of the White House, coming forward. Before I make my unanimous consent request, I would like to yield the floor briefly to the Senator from Pennsylvania, who has been a partner in this effort.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, in continuing to reserve the right to object, would the Senator from Missouri modify his request to also discharge S. 3798 and consider S. Res. 596 and S. 3798 en bloc; and the substitute to the bill at the desk be agreed to; and the bill, as amended, be read the third time; and that if the resolution is agreed to and if the bill, as amended, is passed by the Senate, that the preamble then be agreed to and all motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I want to thank the Senator from Missouri for bringing us to the floor last week, for bringing us to the floor this week, and for working with us to make sure that we could make important changes to an important resolution that he brought before us today. I agree it is a good day for the Senate. Again, I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Toomey, for his bipartisan work on this. Hopefully we get it to the President's desk as soon as possible and send a strong message to the Government of China and send a message to the people of Hong Kong that we stand with them.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I am reserving the right to object. As I listened carefully to the statements made by the Senator from Missouri about the aggressive and unacceptable conduct of the Government of China, or Hong Kong, he is absolutely right, I believe, that it is important that the U.S. Senate--in fact, that the U.S. Government take action strongly expressing our disapproval but also take action to actually show the Government of China that there will be a price to pay if they continue down that path of aggression and try to snuff out the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong. That is why, immediately after the Government of China announced its intentions to move in that direction, we introduced a bipartisan bill. Senator Toomey introduced the bill. I am proud to join him as a cosponsor. We have other Democratic and Republican cosponsors to the bill. I am pleased to see the Senator from North Dakota on the floor. He is a cosponsor of that bill. It is called the Hong Kong Autonomy Act. In addition to expressing the sentiments that the Senator from Missouri lays out in his Senate resolution, it proposes that we take action as the Government of the United States. While we have heard statements from Secretary Pompeo, the reality is that this administration has not exercised any of its existing sanctions authority that it could take to express our strong disapproval of the actions the Government of China is proposing to take with respect to Hong Kong. That is why we introduced the bipartisan bill, again, outlining all the transgressions the Senator from Missouri talked about but actually doing something about them by requiring that the administration impose sanctions on individuals in the Government of China who are undermining the rights of the people in Hong Kong and requiring them to impose sanctions on Chinese Government entities that are depriving the people of Hong Kong of the freedoms the Senator talked about. It goes beyond that. It says that any bank that is aiding and abetting the Government of China in snuffing out the rights of the people of Hong Kong can be subject to sanctions. Now, I know the Senator from Missouri knows the Government of China well enough to understand that the Senate passing a resolution and leaving it at that is not going to change their conduct. I think the Senator is enough of a student of the Chinese Communist Government to recognize that. So that is exactly why we introduced this bipartisan legislation because if we want to have any chance of influencing the conduct of the Government of China, we have to make it clear there will be a price to pay. There is no price to be paid in the Senate passing a resolution. It is a nice statement. I support the statement, but I am also a little tired of this body passing a lot of resolutions, sometimes thinking we have actually done something when we haven't changed a thing. That is why I am here on the Senate floor to ask my colleagues to support what is a bipartisan bill that actually has some teeth in it. It is not just a statement from the Senate. It is an action that will be taken by the Senate and the House and, hopefully, by this administration, which apparently doesn't want to take action. We have heard them already express concerns about this legislation. I would hope that if our colleagues on the Republican side feel as strongly as the Senator from Missouri does, they would want to back up those words with legislative action, and they would want to back up those words with something that is more meaningful and something that tells the Government of China that we stand together in making sure there is a price to pay. I know the Senator from Missouri has worked on other bills making it clear that we do not find acceptable all sorts of conduct by China. I have as well--bipartisan bills. I hope we can join together right here, right now, to support the expression--the statement--that the Senator from Missouri has brought to us but also go beyond that and send a signal right now that we, the U.S. Senate, want to be joined by the House and by the administration in putting action behind those words. That is exactly what the bipartisan Hong Kong Autonomy Act does. So I would respectfully request that the Senator from Missouri modify his request to ask, in addition to what he proposed, that the Banking Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3798, a bill to impose sanctions with respect to foreign persons involved in the erosion of certain obligations of China with respect to Hong Kong; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I want to begin where my colleague, the Senator from Illinois, left off, which is thanking Senator Booker, the Senator from New Jersey, Senator Harris, CBC, and the people protesting around this country for bringing us to this floor at this moment to demand urgent change. I am pleased to be joined by my colleague from the State of Maryland, Senator Cardin, from across the Potomac River, Senator Kaine, and, of course, Senator Durbin from Illinois. We are here because, like those millions of Americans taking to the streets around the country, we understand that this is a moment when we must turn the pain into progress. We must transform the pain of George Floyd's death and the unjust deaths of so many other Black Americans into deep and lasting change. We must bring the passionate pleas of the protesters across the Nation to the floor of the Senate to take action to root out systemic racism in all its ugly forms This is a deeply ingrained problem, and it is clear that tinkering around the edges is not enough. Systems embedded with racism need to be overhauled. The State in the form of the police cannot be allowed to continue unjustly taking the lives and liberty of Black men and women. We must change the nature of policing. We need to change the culture. Here in the Senate, we must change laws to compel changes in culture. Let us remember that the police as an institution are a reflection of the greater society, and we have an obligation to change all those institutions where we find ingrained racist practices, everywhere we find it, since the Nation stood horrified by the video of George Floyd gasping for breath, crying out ``I can't breathe'' as his life was snuffed out of him with a knee to his neck. Other Black men have senselessly died at the hands of police. By now, we probably have all seen the video of Rayshard Brooks. He fell asleep in his car after drinking. He was then interviewed by police for over 20 minutes. If you haven't watched that encounter, I urge you to do so because after that 20-minute conversation, he ended up dead with two bullets in his back. That encounter should never have ended that way. Not far from here, in Woodstock, VA, we had another recent encounter that did not end in violence but exposed some of the racist assumptions that are too often wired into police responses and into societal responses. A Black pastor and Air Force veteran saw a man and woman disposing of an old refrigerator on his property. He told them to stop. The two were upset that the pastor would not let them dump this refrigerator on his property, and they grew irate. They went away, and they came back with three others. Then these five White people surrounded the pastor, began jostling him, taunting him, calling him names, and saying they didn't give a darn about his life and the Black Lives Matter stuff. In defense, he drew a gun, which he legally carried. He called 9-1-1 to get the police to come. The police did come. They arrested and handcuffed the Black pastor while the five White people continued to threaten him and wave as the police took him away. The sheriff in Woodstock has apologized, and the proper charges, including hate crime charges, have been filed against those who trespassed and harassed the pastor, but that initial response tells you what you need to know. Those are the kinds of encounters that Black men and women face everywhere in this country on a regular basis--North, South, East, and West. It reflects the same impulse of the woman in Central Park, NY, who was asked by a Black man and birdwatcher enthusiast to obey the law and leash her dog. Instead, she called the police on him to tell them that an African American was threatening her life. She was exploiting the fact that she would likely be believed. It is same ingrained and racist impulses that resulted in five Black youth--now known as the exonerated five but who were locked up and spent years and years in prison after being falsely accused of a brutal assault in that same Central Park in New York. It is the same racist narrative of one of the first American films, ``The Birth of a Nation,'' showed by Woodrow Wilson in the White House. You can draw a straight line from slavery to Jim Crow, legal segregation, de facto segregation, and institutionalized racism to the deaths of George Floyd and so many other Black Americans. Tinkering with the system will not be enough. Calling for more data and transparency is necessary, but it will not be enough. We have to take up and pass the Justice in Policing Act. I want to thank Senators Booker and Harris and the Congressional Black Caucus for leading this legislative effort. The Supreme Court yesterday had an opportunity to take up and change the doctrine of qualified immunity. They chose not to. Qualified immunity has allowed police and other State officials to act with impunity. There must be consequences for unjustly depriving citizens of life and liberty. The changes called for in the Justice in Policing Act are necessary to protect individuals, to protect communities, and to protect all those police officers who uphold their oath to protect the communities they serve. The police are the agents of the State. Holding police accountable and requiring justice in policing is just the first step. We must also confront the other manifestations of systemic racism and the institutions and societal norms that allow them to continue. We must dismantle them with the same deliberate actions that ingrain them in the first place. Tinkering with the system will not be enough. We need dramatic reforms in our criminal justice system. We have less than 5 percent of the world's population but 20 percent of its prison population-- something that the Senator from New Jersey has spoken about often, as have my colleagues. We need to change that. That is a stain on our country. We need to get rid of the private prison system that gives some corporations a financial incentive to propagate a system that locks so many people up, but we need many other changes as well. We know that COVID-19 has disproportionately killed people of color. We must address the underlying health disparities that lead to radically different outcomes for the Black community from COVID-19 to maternal mortality. President Trump celebrated the fact that the May unemployment rate was 15 percent. That is nothing in and of itself to celebrate. It means millions and millions of Americans are out of work through no fault of their own. But he neglected to mention that the Black unemployment rate went up in that May report because we have deep inequities from our systems of income and wealth. We have deep inequalities in our school systems. Title I is persistently underfunded by over $30 billion every year. Think about the $2.1 trillion we are spending to help keep the economy from going underwater in this short period of time. My goodness, we could spend $300 billion over 10 years to fully fund title I. We are seeing continued discrimination in housing and the Department of Housing and Urban Development has to make efforts to advance fairness. We have a lot of work to do in this country. We have a lot of work to do in the Senate. This is a moment of reckoning for this country--another one. This time, let's not allow it to pass and let's start--let's start--right now by taking up and passing the Justice in Policing Act. But that is just a start. We have so much more work to do to build a truly more perfect union and to live up to the promise of equal rights and equal justice and equal opportunity and really ensure that we have equal justice under law, which of course is ensconced above the Supreme Court of the United States. Let's get to work. Let's do it now. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, after Monday's shameful display by the Secretary of Defense, I voted against the President's nominees to be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities. The language of war has no place on American streets in the face of peaceful protests. Secretary Esper's dangerous comment that the military needs to ``dominate the battlespace''--referring to American cities--threatened the lives of American citizens exercising their constitutional rights. His willingness to accompany the President to a photo-op after gassing peaceful protesters underscores the moral rot in the Department's leadership. At this time, I have lost confidence that any nominee can be trusted to stand up to the President's attempts to weaponize the Defense Department for his personal and political ends. For that reason, I voted against his nominees in the Department.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, let me start by saying to our colleague, the Senator from New Jersey who just spoke on the floor, that we are all thankful for his passion to make sure that this country lives up to its promise and for sharing with this body his personal testimony about racism and the need for all of us to move urgently to address the fundamental inequities at the heart of our society and institutions. I don't think it is an overstatement to say that we are at a pivotal point in our country. It is a moment of reckoning. Historians will carefully examine this moment to see how our country responded to see which path we took, how the Senate responded, how each Senator responded. The immediate spark for this moment was the brutal murder of George Floyd by agents of government. In Minneapolis, a police officer aided and abetted by three other officers--we all witnessed the horror of George Floyd gasping ``I can't breathe'' as a White officer kept his knee on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds; three other officers participated in the crime. All four need to be brought to justice, but the murder of George Floyd was not an isolated event in the United States of America. It is not the first time a Black man has called out ``I can't breathe'' as he was choked or lynched. We can draw a straight line that runs from slavery to Jim Crow to legal segregation to de facto segregation to institutional racism to the killings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, as well as the vigilante killings of Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery and others. The White police officer who looked at the video as he kept his knee on the neck of George Floyd thought he would get away with his actions because he and so many others had not been held accountable before. He thought he could get away with it, based on his experience. We must change that. As Senator Booker said, we can have our moments of silence, we can have vigils, but that is not enough. It is not nearly enough. This is a moment that demands real action, real change, and real results, starting with changes in police practices and the systemic racism and institutions that have shielded those who engage in misconduct from accountability. Those changes must include establishing truly independent oversight mechanisms to ensure that those police officers who betrayed the public trust are held accountable. We must ban outright the use of chokeholds unless the officer's life is in imminent danger, and we must use Federal leverage to incentivize deescalatory practices over escalatory ones. We need national standards backed up by real consequences for those who do not comply, and we must establish a Federal databank that tracks reports of police misconduct--not simply unjustified killings by police, but all forms of misconduct. These and others changes are required to ensure the protection of citizens, communities, and an overwhelming number of police officers who are meeting their sworn oaths to protect our communities. Bad cops are bad for good cops, and we need to make sure we have a system in place to punish misconduct and reward those who are upholding their sworn duty. Now, while the murder of George Floyd and others has, again, exposed the need for systemic change in police accountability, it also cries out for systemic change to address racism embedded in our institutions. The need for additional change does not mean we have not made progress in our country on key issues of civil rights and political rights, but it does mean we have a very long unfinished road ahead to achieve the promise of equal justice, equal rights, and equal opportunity in America. The murder of George Floyd comes in the middle of a pandemic that has inflicted disproportionate harm on communities of color, especially the Black community, because of deep underlying disparities in our society that have been well documented. It comes amid a pandemic that has shone a harsh light on deep inequality in our education systems, including the digital divide and the homework gap, but so much more. The reality is we must put all of our systems under the microscope and very intentionally root out racial bias and discriminatory impact. In the city of Baltimore, in my State of Maryland, we have a terrible legacy of housing segregation. Baltimore City had an explicit committee on segregation, which was followed by harsh and restrictive covenants and redlining that blocked our Black community from economic mobility. That may seem like a long time ago, but the harmful impact of those laws is lasting, and you can still trace those red lines separating our neighborhoods today. So let us be very clear here that these disparities can be directly traced to policies that were designed to discriminate. For decades, Federal, State, and local policies covering issues from housing to banking amounted to nothing less than state--sponsored efforts to deny African-Americans the basic equal rights they are owed under our Constitution. While many of these policies are off the books today, their legacy endures and practices endure, and it is our obligation at every level of government to uproot and destroy those embedded policies with the same kind of deliberation that they were put in place in the first place. Now, the protests taking place in Minneapolis and all across the country are an expression of the deep pain caused by the continued death toll and other harms caused by our failure as a nation to address the underlying inequities in our society and in our institutions. That is why people have taken to the streets to protest. It was Dr. King who said: There can be no justice without peace, and there can be no peace without justice. Real justice and real peace is long overdue. Last night, in response to those protests, we witnessed something I never thought we would see in the United States of America. We had the President of the United States call up and order military police to fire tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful protesters to clear a path for him to conduct a photo op in front of Saint John's Episcopal church, a historic church close by to the White House. Here is what Mariann Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal archdiocese of Washington, had to say about what the President did. She made a statement that outlined the President's abuse of their church for his political purposes, and then the church itself issued the following statement--I should point out that the pastor of the church and many of the parishioners were at the protest and providing water and nutrition to some of the protesters. Here is what the leaders of the church said: We at St. John's Church were shocked at the surprise visit from the President this evening and even more appalled at the violent clearing of Lafayette Square to make the visit possible. St. John's is a community that welcomes all--from powerful presidents to the homeless--to worship God. We fully espouse the words of our Baptismal Covenant, which says, in part, that we ``will strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.'' Living that covenant, we stand with those peacefully protesting the tragic and unnecessary death of George Floyd, and the far too many who came before him. We pray that our nation finally confronts its history of racism and, as a result, can fully embrace the peace of God that passes all understanding. Those are really words that we should have heard from our President. Instead, they came from religious leaders responding to the President's use of their church for political purposes--and, in the process, violating the First Amendment rights of peaceful protesters, the rights of those protesters to peacefully assemble, as the President ordered up military police to clear a peaceful crowd. We also listened in disbelief as Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, talked about turning public places into ``battle spaces'' to be dominated. This is the Secretary of Defense, who is charged with defending our country, talking about turning rubber bullets and tear gas against peaceful protesters here in the United States. We witnessed General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in full military uniform, presiding over the breakup of this peaceful demonstration. I remind Secretary Esper and Chairman Milley that their oath is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and they are not permitted by that oath to follow illegal orders, even from the President of the United States. The President of the United States can give them what orders he chooses, but the Constitution and their oath requires that their first loyalty be to the United States of America and not to any one individual. So I think it is important that we investigate this incident and the role that the Secretary and the Joint Chiefs of Staff played in following the President's illegal orders, illegal because they represented a gross violation of the First Amendment rights of citizens of the United States to peacefully assemble. Let me close with this. I said at the outset that this is a moment when our country has different paths to choose and this Senate is very much a part of deciding which path we will take. Will we take the path that Senator Booker said of not only having moments of silence, but working together to pass true reform to address police accountability, to address other forms of systemic racism? Will we be willing to stand up to the President of the United States when he violates the civil rights and First Amendment rights of American citizens? That is really a test for this institution, whether we are willing to do our job and uphold our oath to the Constitution of the United States. Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the confirmation of Troy Edgar to be Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Homeland Security. The nominee would have authority over the transfer and reprogramming of funds within the Department of Homeland Security. While he has pledged to notify Congress in advance of any such action, this administration has made it clear that it will continue to use every available tool to fund the wall that President Trump said Mexico would pay for and his administration's abusive immigrant detention policies. For that reason, any nominee to this position merits heightened scrutiny. I am alarmed by rampant overcrowding and squalid conditions in DHS detention facilities. Despite DHS IG reports and numerous congressional inquiries and hearings, the Department has consistently mismanaged these facilities and shown a disregard for the care of those in its custody. To date, 674 detainees and 39 detention facility personnel have tested positive for COVID-19. Notwithstanding its failure to ensure the safety of its facility personnel and detainees, the Department has continued to use its transfer and reprogramming authority to increase the number of detention beds. Last August, DHS transferred or reprogrammed $271 million, including $155 million from the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund, to expand ICE operations at the southern border. A promise to notify Congress does nothing to stop these activities. I am confident that anything short of a statutory limitation on transfer and reprogramming authority will be ignored and that any official who stands in the way of these efforts will be circumvented or fired. The Senate should not confirm a nominee with the power to approve such actions until reasonable limits are enacted into law. For that reason, I voted against this nominee.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. This is an unfortunate moment for the U.S. Senate. We came together on a bipartisan basis just a very short time ago to pass the CARES Act. It passed here 96 to nothing. That followed two other bipartisan efforts that came out of the House, passed the Senate, and were signed by the President, again, with overwhelming support. Yet, today, we see from the majority leader a complete political stunt here on the floor of the U.S. Senate--something that does not have bipartisan support, something that is go it alone, take it or leave it, and totally violates the spirit all of us have been working on during this crisis where we were able to come together in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives with the White House to, on three prior occasions, pass legislation in a way that addressed the issues that are important to this country. Yet, today, we have this situation where the majority leader knew full well there was not agreement and consensus on moving forward with this proposal. That is why we are here today. This was, in fact, designed to fail, designed as a political stunt. It is actually not the first time we have seen this. You may recall that, just before we came together and passed the CARES Act 96-0, the majority leader came to the floor of the Senate back then and tried to ram through an unfinished product while negotiations were going on between Secretary Mnuchin and Democrats in the House and the Senate to try to finalize the bill, and that actually caused unnecessary delay. But the majority leader came to the floor then and tried to ram it through. It didn't work then, and it is not going to work today. I would ask the majority leader--and I think all of us would--to go back to trying to address these issues the way we addressed them in a successful manner before. I am going to shortly propose an amendment that addresses some of those concerns--an amendment to the majority leader's proposal. I would like to address some of the issues first, and my colleague, Senator Cardin, has addressed many with respect to small businesses. First of all, he pointed out that the one program to help small businesses that has actually really run out of money is the emergency loan and grant program. Let's talk about the PPP program. This is a really important program to incentivize small businesses and nonprofits to keep employees on the payroll and allow them to help keep the lights on, pay fixed costs, pay the mortgage, pay the rent, whatever it may be, so that they can emerge on the other side of this storm without having had to fold. Many of us anticipated long before the CARES Act passed that this program would need more money. I was part of a group that proposed $600 billion for a program like this, recognizing the demand would be huge, as it is on other programs. It is not just in need of more money. It needs some important fixes, which I daresay would have bipartisan support as well. I don't know if the majority leader saw the letter just this morning from the National Restaurant Association. Here is what they say: The PPP is funded at $349 billion, and we expect that lenders will reach that ceiling shortly. We appreciate the bipartisan calls this week to provide prompt additional funding for the program. Then they go on to say: However, equally important is the need to address the limitations of the program that do not recognize the unique and evolving challenges of the restaurant business cycle and our path to recovery. This is not a Republican group or a Democratic group. This is a group that represents small businesses, restaurants, just trying to get by, and what they say to us this morning is: Yes, we do need additional money. We know that. But equally important, let's fix some of the kinks, and there are kinks in this program. I got a letter at 12:44 a.m. this morning from a small business owner who had been banking with Wells Fargo. Then, of course, Wells Fargo hit the cap. We thought we had dealt with that in recent days. But he is not sure he is still going to be able to get that loan through Wells Fargo, and he says: I've also now looked at more than 100 websites of 7(a) lenders in the greater DC area and have found that NONE-- capital letters NONE--will accept a PPP application from any small business that did not bank with them before February 15, 2020. Here are some other headlines in recent days: ``Baltimore-area small businesses complain of continuing problems gaining access to federal lending program.'' `` `Nightmare': 3 small-business owners describe process of applying for PPP coronavirus loans.'' The Journal Record: ``Community bankers frustrated with PPP rollout.'' Another headline, this one from another part of the country: ``PPP loan plan a mess so far for small businesses riding out coronavirus crisis.'' ``Billions `disbursed' through Paycheck Protection Program? Small businesses say not yet.'' The Wall Street Journal: ``Big Banks Favor Certain Customers in $350 Billion Small-Business Loan Program.'' Another article: ``Many small businesses are being shut out of the new loan program by major banks.'' Mr. President, what we are saying here today is, yes, we know we need more money for this program. Many of us predicted this before we passed the CARES Act. But for goodness' sakes, let's take the opportunity to make some bipartisan fixes to allow this program to work better for the very people it is designed to help: small businesses, nonprofits. That is what they are asking us to do. That is what the restaurant association is asking us to do. That is what they want us to do, and we could do it probably just as quickly if the majority leader took a moment to sit down with us and negotiate that piece. There are also other major demands on the system right now that we should address at this moment, and one of them is something I know we are all hearing about every day, which is to protect the healthcare workers on the frontlines. After all, if we want to address the economic crisis, we need to address the health crisis that precipitated that. We need to flatten this virus out, bring it down, and that is the best way to get on the road to economic recovery. I am sure all of my colleagues are hearing from their nurses and doctors and frontline healthcare workers about the urgent need for personal protective equipment. We provided funds in the original bill, but we know, today, that that will be exhausted quickly. We know it because we can add up the requests coming from around the country. So let's address that issue. We are hearing about it every day. Just yesterday at our delegation, our region, Senator Cardin and I and other members of the Maryland delegation, we wrote to FEMA just yesterday, to the Administrator of FEMA. We pointed out that in our most recent requests, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia received just a small percentage of the equipment that we requested from FEMA. The District received no hospital ventilators. I would point out for all of us who are following this, it is predicted that this-- Maryland, DC, and Virginia--is going to be one of the next hotspots. Zero ventilators, zero safety goggles--we asked for 663,000 gloves, and over 1 million respirators masks. We got 4,000 of one. That is one problem we need to address on an urgent basis, just as urgently as we need to address the small business situation. Testing--my goodness, look, this virus, we all know, got an 8 to 10- week head start on us because we were flat-footed when it came to testing. We need a national rapid testing system so that we can ensure that people will get the tests and find out whether they have the virus. That not only helps us fight the virus, but it will also help us as we try to get the country back to work on the other end of this. I would propose those are real needs as well and that we can address those here now. In addition to that, as Senator Cardin said, we just spoke to Maryland's Governor yesterday who, in addition to being Maryland's Governor, is the head of the National Governors Association. He and Governor Cuomo have worked very closely together. We have a bipartisan request from the National Governors Association to help States and local jurisdictions. We have been on the phone nonstop with our local officials. They are running out of equipment. We have got firefighters who need help. We have emergency responders who need help. All of these requests are urgent and, I believe, could be dealt with on a bipartisan basis, if the majority leader would just take a moment, instead of trying to rush this through, and we could actually get it done, as we were able to do before with the 96-to-nothing vote. So, at this time, Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk. I know people are anxious to get out of here. We didn't have to come in at all, if it hadn't been for the decision to try to ram this through. I just want to make that point. To the majority leader, we knew this wasn't going to get through. I see people are frustrated and want to leave, but let's get it done, and let's get it done right, and let's have another 96-to-nothing vote here in the U.S. Senate. So I ask unanimous consent that the majority leader modify the request and ask that the amendment at the desk, which is the text of the interim emergency COVID-19 Relief Act, be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed with no further intervening action or debate.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, as other Senators have mentioned, we see our fellow Americans uniting around the country to fight the coronavirus and to help those in need. Most of all, we are grateful to the men and women in healthcare, the healthcare workers on the frontlines of this fight--the nurses, the doctors, all the other staff in hospitals and community health centers and in clinics who are putting themselves and their own health at risk to help their fellow Americans. We in the Senate, like our fellow Americans, must come together to do the right thing for the country at this moment in time--to provide a surge of help to those on the frontlines of the coronavirus fight and to help those who are suffering from the economic fallout, workers and small businesses and midsize businesses and others who are absolutely getting clobbered as we all try to fight this virus together. Congress must unite this evening, as we have on two prior occasions during this emergency when we came together to pass phase 1 to provide emergency, immediate healthcare support to public health entities and to provide more funds to do research on a vaccine for the coronavirus and more funds for research on antivirals to address the coronavirus. Then we passed phase 2, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, where we made sure that testing was free because we don't want any American to say: I am not going to get tested even though I feel like I might have the symptoms. I am not going to get tested because I can't afford it. It is putting both themselves and others in the community at risk. So we said we have to make sure these tests are free. We also provided sick leave because we don't want anybody going to work when they feel sick and they have the virus if going to work is the only way they can put food on the table, by getting a paycheck. So we said: Look, stay at home, and we will provide for paid leave. There was a gap--a big gap--in that that still needs to be addressed. We took some important measures in phase 1 and phase 2, and now here we are this evening on phase 3, where we are not only providing additional dollars to fight the coronavirus and the health emergency but also dealing with the economic fallout, which is growing by the day. I am not going to go through all the provisions that do that. I will say that this bill is far from perfect. This is not a bill I would have written. I dare say it is probably not the bill that any one Senator would have written. But with all its flaws, it does some very important things that are absolutely necessary during this national emergency. There has been a lot of talk tonight about the unemployment compensation provision. Those are absolutely essential as a lifeline to workers who each day are losing their jobs around the country in many industries. It is absolutely essential that in that process, people who are out of work through no fault of their own are still able to pay their bills, their rent or their mortgage, keep the lights on, get food, and that is why we are working to make sure they have real replacement income during this 4-month emergency period. The provisions regarding small businesses and middle-size businesses are very important too. I am sure we are all hearing from folks who already had to close their doors because when there are no customers coming in the door, there are no sales, no income, and so if you are a small business, you can't make your debt payments and you can't make payroll. So this bill does have a lot of very important provisions in it with respect to small businesses. I am really glad that we moved, with respect to small businesses, to loans only--to loans that would be forgiven so long as the small businesses spent those monies to, one, maintain payroll or rehire people if they have already had to let them go, and, two, to pay essential bills. Just adding more loans and debt onto small businesses would only be like an anchor around their necks at the end of a 4-month or whatever period it may be. They wouldn't be able to dig themselves out of that hole. It was very important to have loans that will be forgiven so long as the loans are used for the intended purposes. We also made important provisions for nonprofits that hire millions of Americans and as well for midsize businesses. With respect to some of the largest industries in the country that have been hard hit, it is appropriate to also give them help, but it is also important that as we do that, we safeguard the American taxpayer and the public interest. When the proposal first arrived here in the Senate from the White House, we were looking at about a $500 billion slush fund with no strings attached, no real accountability, and no real transparency. So we tried to tie that down so that we will have an inspector general with subpoena power that will ensure that there will be no stock buybacks with these emergency funds. Now, we are going to still look at the fine print, but we have come a long way from the proposed blank check to the Secretary of the Treasury, which was in the bill as it arrived here as proposed by the administration. There is another thing that is in the bill that is before us tonight that was not in the bill proposed by the administration, and that is badly needed help for States and cities and towns that are on the frontlines of this battle across the country. We heard about 5, 6 days ago from the majority leader: Oh, well, let's just wait. Maybe we can do that sometime down the road. Well, we heard from a bipartisan group of Governors through the National Governors Association that they need that help now. I am sure you have all been fielding calls from your elected officials, your Governors and others, about how they desperately need additional help to fight this virus. I am glad this bill contains $150 billion to help those States. I want to raise tonight something that I discovered about this bill just a few hours ago that gives me real heartburn and actually, I believe, reflects badly on this Senate. Here is how we distributed the funds to the States. Each State, regardless of population, gets $1.2 billion, and then the remainder of the money--up to $150 billion--is distributed to States based on population. You can question whether that is the best and most effective way to essentially allocate resources when you are fighting a coronavirus like this, which is more intense in some places than others, but that is not my overall point right now. Here is what we discovered: The people of the District of Columbia, the people of the Nation's Capital, were left out of that formula. They are fighting the coronavirus just like Americans in every other State and city. They are part of other Federal formulas. For example, title I for education, highway funds, and other Federal formula dollars go to the people of the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia has a population that is higher than 2 of the 50 States. There are more residents in the District of Columbia, the Nation's Capital, than the State of Wyoming and the State of Vermont. They were left out of that category they are usually put in, and instead they were put into a formula with Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and some of the territories. The net effect of that--the net effect of putting the people in the Nation's Capital in that formula versus the formula with the States-- will cost the District of Columbia about $700 million. That is because that other formula is based entirely on population, and Puerto Rico has about 3 million people in it. So when you put the District of Columbia into that funding kettle, into that funding pot, they get shortchanged $700 million. That is the case even though the people of the District of Columbia send the Federal Treasury more tax dollars than the people of 22 other States. Let me say that again. The people of the District of Columbia send the IRS more tax revenues than the people of 22 other States. Yet, when it came time to write the formula for distributing emergency funds under the coronavirus, they weren't part of the kind of funding formulas they normally are. I asked about this because I thought maybe this would be a simple fix. I mean, surely in a bill of $2 trillion in emergency relief, we can do right by the people of the District of Columbia and not shortchange them $700 million. The answer I got back was no. No, no, this was not a mistake. This was not an oversight. Republican negotiators insisted on shortchanging the people of the District of Columbia. If I am wrong about that, it would be a very easy fix in an amendment that could be offered by the majority leader and, I am sure, accepted unanimously--accepted unanimously--except for the fact that this actually was a point that was negotiated. I am not going to hold up a $2 trillion emergency rescue package that is urgently needed by the country for this, but I think it is shameful. I think it is shameful that, in a $2 trillion emergency rescue package, we would shortchange the people right here in the Nation's Capital, people whom we see coming into work every day, many of the Federal employees who work day in and day out for the Federal Government. Many of them live here. Many of them live in surrounding States. Many of them live all over the country. But for the people who live here, to shortchange them and to do it intentionally is really outrageous. So here we are, coming together, and that is the right thing to do. As I said, this bill has many, many flaws and many, many problems. I certainly wouldn't have written it this way, and I would never have done wrong by the people of the District of Columbia the way this was intentionally done, apparently, in this bill. But, overall, we need this bill for the country. We need it because we have a national emergency, both on the healthcare front and the economic front. So I hope, going away from here, as we come together and I hope do the right thing with a large vote, that there will be some Senators, whoever were part of negotiating that deal and who said, no, we are going to shortchange the people in our Nation's Capital, will feel a little bit ashamed. And I think all those people who didn't want to change this provision, which is easy to change just like that, should feel ashamed. This is our Nation's Capital. The people who live and work here deserve to be treated with respect. There is no U.S. Senator who represents the people of the District of Columbia. Some of us who live in the surrounding areas work hard to do so. I just wish Senators from the rest of the country, and especially, in this case, apparently, our Republican colleagues, would show a little respect for the people who live in the Capitol of this great country. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I am grateful. I thank the Senator from Maine, but I am happy to have her go first.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, America is in crisis. Time is of the essence, and the Senate needs to work on a bipartisan basis to get the job done and get it done today, without delay. We see our fellow Americans all across this country uniting at this time of crisis--neighbors helping neighbors, people helping throughout their communities. We are watching our healthcare workers on the frontlines of fighting this virus, true heroes who are putting themselves at risk every day in order to help patients coming in the door. They are facing extreme shortages in personal protective equipment. We need to rush that out in much greater volumes to protect them. We still have a huge shortage of tests in this country and got caught way behind the curve, and we are having to catch up. We are trying to manufacture ventilators to help those who are sick and those who may get sick. In doing that, Americans are coming together. We have seen stories of notices going out to dentists' offices and others who have important personal protective equipment like masks but aren't needing them right now, to try to rush those to local hospitals. We have seen nurses and doctors and other healthcare workers on the frontline coming together, and that is exactly what this Senate and House need to do. We need to do what Americans around the country are doing, uniting to help one another and help our country. We did that on rounds 1 and 2. We worked very quickly to put together an $8.3 billion package for round 1. What did that include? More resources for our public health infrastructure, more resources to try to accelerate the development of a vaccine and therapeutics. That was all good work. On round 2, what did we do? We said we want to make sure that tests for the coronavirus are free because we don't want Americans not going to get tests because they can't afford them. We had to fight for that on the Democratic side, but it became bipartisan in the end. We worked to provide more paid sick leave because we don't think it is a good idea for workers who are living paycheck to paycheck to feel like they have got to go to work when they are sick even if it means they are going to potentially spread the virus. We want to make sure that they can pay the bills at home and stay home and not spread the virus. The provision in round 2 regarding paid sick leave was good. There are still big gaps in it. So how did rounds 1 and 2 come to pass? I hear talk over here that this is all a House initiative. Actually, it was a bipartisan initiative. The White House sat down with Speaker Pelosi, Secretary Mnuchin with Speaker Pelosi, and they hammered out rounds 1 and 2 in a bipartisan fashion. They came to the U.S. Senate, and they were passed with big bipartisan votes. We need that same bipartisan spirit now. I have been listening in to some of the conversation on the floor. First of all, I keep hearing there aren't Democrats on the floor. Well, we are coming. The other thing I keep hearing is let's blame Speaker Pelosi. I mean, this is pretty amazing. This bill is in the U.S. Senate. We are having discussions right now, Democrats and Republicans. We are having discussions right now, Democratic Senators and Republican Senators and the White House--again, primarily with Secretary Mnuchin--yet I am listening to people on the floor blaming Speaker Pelosi. Well, guess how rounds 1 and 2 actually happened? They happened because Speaker Pelosi sat down with the Trump administration and they hammered it out on a bipartisan basis and came over here. This time-- this time--the majority leader, Senator McConnell, wanted to start the process in the Senate. So let's get it done. Don't go pointing fingers at Speaker Pelosi. She is not here. I keep hearing about the House wanting a Green New Deal as part of this emergency package. That is a total red herring. I even looked at the list of ideas that the House put out, including Speaker Pelosi's. There is no Green New Deal on this thing. So let's get real. So why can't we vote today, again, except for by unanimous consent? It is not because of the Democrats' vote. It is because the leader, the Republican leader, chose to bring up that vote. That was a motion to proceed to the cloture vote. It was a cloture vote--a motion to proceed to cloture on the motion to proceed. That is what it was. So what did the leader know? He knew that we are still engaged in negotiations. They are going on right now. Hopefully, when all of us on the floor leave here, we will continue to engage. But the leader knew that the votes were not there for that motion, that cloture motion. Yet he burned the one opportunity he would have today on that vote, knowing it wouldn't succeed. He could have waited 1 hour. He could have waited 2 hours. He could have waited 3 hours. He chose to hold that vote knowing it would fail. That is a self-inflicted wound on the U.S. Senate and on the American people at this moment. Because of that decision, we will have the earliest opportunity to vote again on Wednesday. That was the decision Leader McConnell made when he decided to hold that vote today, knowing he did not have 60 votes, knowing that the negotiations were going on right now. So he is right. If we want to have a vote between now and Wednesday, we have to do it by unanimous consent. I hope we get to that point, but--make no mistake--the vote that was held earlier could have waited until later today. It could have waited until we got closer to an agreement. And here is the tragedy of it. We are getting pretty close on a lot of important issues. We are still far away on some, but we are getting close on some very important issues: unemployment insurance. As we speak, people are losing their jobs. We know that. Small businesses are shutting their doors. They started days ago having to shut their doors in the case of restaurants and bars and many other establishments. We need to attack that from two angles. One is the unemployment insurance system, and we have made great progress in these discussions on that. What do we have to do when it comes to unemployment insurance? Well, we should work to make sure that somebody who is losing their job through no fault of their own because of the coronavirus--because they are working for an establishment like a restaurant that has to shut its doors--has 100 percent wage replacement for the period of time of this emergency. We wanted 6 months. Republicans wanted 3 months. I think we have got right now, in the draft, 4 months. OK. That is a compromise. We also wanted to make sure UI could cover people who are not part of the traditional UI system: part-time workers, the self-employed, independent contractors, gig workers. So we have worked together on a bipartisan basis to make sure that we try to get those people help through UI as well, even though they are not part of the traditional system. We are trying to streamline the process by which they can demonstrate that they have been making an income so that they can get help through UI in this emergency moment. We are pretty close on that. We have worked together on small and even midsized businesses because they are getting hammered right now across the country. We are all hearing from them, and they have had to let off their employees, in many cases, under very painful circumstances. They don't want to let their employees go, but no customers in the door means no sales, means no income. You still have to pay your rent, if you are a small business, or your mortgage. You have other fixed costs. So we have come together to work to try to provide a small business plan that would provide funds to those small businesses so that they can keep people on their payroll and, if they have already had to let them go, rehire them and also meet their fixed costs. And if they spend the money the way it is directed--meaning for necessary, fixed costs and for employees--then, at the end of the day, that loan can be forgiven because we don't want small businesses to have to go through 3 months with no money through the door and just have a huge pile of bills they can't repay at the end of the day. We have also tried to expand that to include midsized businesses. We are making progress on important things. Those conversations are going on as we speak, but there are some areas where we need to reach final agreement. One of them is proper oversight and safeguards on the $500 billion fund to help some of the biggest businesses in the country. We need to make sure we don't allow this economy to go into free fall, but I hope we would all agree that we don't want a major corporation getting taxpayer dollars and going and doing another stock buyback or for big employee compensation. There is some language in there, but then there are waiver provisions. I hope we would at least put the safeguards in this provision that we did in TARP, which was the rescue package in 2008. That was much maligned. For many good reasons, there were not adequate protections to make sure that moneys were spent in an accountable way. Don't we want to make sure the $500 billion is spent in an accountable way? I don't know why it is taking us so long to come to an agreement on that. I don't think our Republican colleagues would want to give any administration a blank check to spend $500 billion however they want, without any clear safeguards or some process for accountability. That is what we are talking about now. Maybe we could resolve that in 2 hours; maybe we could resolve it in 3. Then we could have had the vote. But the majority leader burned that vote. He burned that vote by having it when he knew the votes weren't there and when he knew conversations were still going on. I was in my office listening to this discussion on the floor of the Senate with the majority leader all upset. He brought that on this body by holding that vote as negotiations were going on. What else do we need to work on still? We all got a letter from the National Governors Association, bipartisan--Republicans and Democrats-- saying: Hey, we are the States; we are on the frontlines of this; we need some help. I don't know if all my colleagues on the floor know it, but just about 48 hours ago, the position of the Republican Senate leadership was: No, we are not going to deal with those big issues now. We will do it another day. Those are issues pressing right now. We are hearing that from Republican and Democratic Governors. We are hearing it from mayors. We heard it from the National League of Cities. Don't you think it is worth spending a couple of hours so that we can hash all that out before you call a vote where you know the outcome in advance? FMAP--these are Republican and Democratic Governors pointing out they need more Federal help on the healthcare and medical front as more and more people are coming in the doors. Don't you think we can work that out in the next couple of hours? Why hold a vote that you know is going to fail and means you can't hold the next one until Wednesday without unanimous consent? I hope my Republican colleagues will ask the majority leader that question. We have made a lot of progress on some very important parts of this bill, but we also have a fair distance to go. But a fair distance in terms of getting to an agreement doesn't mean it has to take all day. We should be able to come to an agreement on many of these things. The administration took an appropriate action, saying that they don't want landlords to be able to foreclosure on certain mortgages. I think we should all work together to make sure that people don't get thrown out of their homes through foreclosures--or evicted from their homes if they are renters--during this period of time if it turns out they don't have the income to pay those bills. I hope we can work that out too. I hope there will be agreement on that measure. Instead of playing political games on the floor of the Senate and calling a vote where the outcome was predetermined because we are still negotiating on a bipartisan basis--instead of doing that, let's get this job done. To listen to Members of the U.S. Senate who are negotiating this here try to blame the House of Representatives and Speaker Pelosi--come on, that is just political rhetoric. The House passed rounds 1 and 2; they did it on a bipartisan basis, speaking with the administration and Secretary Mnuchin. They did that. It is the Senate right now that can't get its job done. Let's stop playing games--procedural games. Let's hammer this out, as we have been trying to do. We have made progress. We can close the distance, and then if we can get all that done, we could actually bring it up by unanimous consent anytime. Let's do what the American people are doing: Let's unite at this time of crisis; let's unite for the good of the country. We did it on rounds 1 and 2. Let's do it to help save our economy and fight the healthcare fight against the coronavirus. I am confident--I am confident--if we put our minds to it, we can get the job done for the American people. Let's go back to work. Let's complete these negotiations, and maybe we can come back in a couple of hours with a proposal that gets the consent and support of this entire body. I yield the floor.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, thank you for presiding today, and to all who are here at this moment of extreme challenge for our country and for the world, we must rise to the occasion and unite to fight a common enemy, COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus. What we are witnessing is Americans from all backgrounds and all walks of life doing that around the country--coming together and uniting, not physically close, but spiritually close to one another as we work our way through this crisis. In my State of Maryland, people are doing exactly that. Our healthcare workers on the frontlines--whether they be nurses, whether they be people working in clinics, in the hospitals, whether they be doctors, they are all pulling together to get the job done. Elected officials from the Federal, State, and local governments are working together, as are nonprofits and businesses. Three nights ago, I held a telephone townhall meeting on COVID-19, and more than 5,000 Marylanders joined that call. They called in to share their hopes, their concerns, and their determination. Yesterday, in Maryland, we lost the second life to COVID-19, and our medical services are being stretched thin. But people are coming together to get the job done, and as we address the healthcare challenges, we must also deal with the financial and economic pain that is arising from that and spreading quickly. Most of all, Marylanders, like other Americans, told us they want clear guidance from public health officials and a united and effective response to both the healthcare crisis and the economic fallout. Since Marylanders are united and Americans are united, we, too, in Congress must unite to do our job. And to date--to date--we have risen to meet the moment. The question is, What comes next? Over a few weeks ago, we did unite to pass emergency legislation to provide $8.3 billion to provide funding to our public health systems and to direct more dollars toward developing a vaccine and therapeutics. Last week we passed a measure to ensure that tests for the coronavirus are free. It makes no sense to have any American discouraged from getting a test because they can't pay for it. That hurts them; that hurts the entire community. That was an important provision, as was the emergency food assistance for people in need. In States that have closed schools, we have lots of students who are now home. Many of those students get one of their best meals at school during lunch, so that emergency food assistance has been absolutely vital. In Maryland, we have about 350 schools that are now being used for families to pick up food for their kids and for others in the community. We help provide more resources to State insurance systems, which are being stressed more and more as we speak, and we need to do a lot more on that front. We passed emergency sick leave measures because we do not want to have anybody feeling that they have to go to work in order to get the paycheck to pay the bills if they are feeling sick. That is bad for them, and obviously it is bad for their coworkers who would risk getting the virus. So we took an important measure there, although there, as well, there were big gaps in the paid sick leave provisions, which we must close as we work on round 3 of this legislation. So that brings me to what we are going to face now in the coming 12 to 24 hours, which is coming up with an economic package--a package that deals with the economic fallout, and I want to address what I think should be our priorities there. But before I do that, I do want to take a moment to talk about the healthcare situation that we are witnessing right now because, of course, to the extent that we can stop the spread of the virus, to the extent we stop the contagion from the virus, that is also the fastest way to try to get our economy back on track. What we are seeing is so many businesses going under and being threatened because of precautions people are taking--understandable precautions--to make sure that we don't spread the virus. So in that fight on the healthcare front, I want to salute--I want to salute--and thank all those healthcare workers who are on the frontlines: the nurses, the hospital and clinic staffs, the doctors who are doing heroic work and putting their lives and their health at risk to help others and save the lives of others. We here in this Chamber must do everything in our power to support them in that important work--to support them as they support others. That begins with making sure they have all the equipment they need to protect themselves, but that is not happening. That is not happening as we gather here. There are severe shortages in the supply of masks, shortages in supplies of simple but essential items, like gloves and gowns. It took far too long, but the President finally invoked his authority under the Defense Production Act, which helps spur domestic production of some of these supplies. But even as we gather now, it is not clear whether that is really up and running as it should be. In fact, it is suggested from reports that we are falling short. At the same time, we know others in the world are experiencing these shortages. They are also being hit hard by the coronavirus. So here in the United States, we cannot continue to expect to get these necessary supplies from overseas when they are going to need them and keep them in their own countries, and that is why it is essential that we ramp up efforts yesterday to make sure that we have these supply chains here at home. Testing of the coronavirus--it is clear that the coronavirus got an 8- to 10-week head start in this country, and we were woefully unprepared, especially with respect to tests to try to identify the spread of the virus and where it was and how fast it was moving. We were also unprepared on our testing infrastructure. While we are now ramping up, we are still far behind. There are still far too many bottlenecks in the system. At Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, they are doing their own testing, but their testing has been limited by shortages in reagents. That was true a week ago; it continues to be true today. And the University of Maryland Medical System, another major research hospital system in our State, has not yet begun to do their testing because of continued shortages of reagents. That is absolutely unacceptable. We are also hearing of shortages in swabs--simple swabs--simply to take the test. We need to ramp up the testing supply. We also need to knock down the barriers to getting tests. We need to adopt the South Korean model, and many of us have been calling for this for a long time. We see States and Governors moving forward with this, but the Federal Government needs to take a much more active role in establishing that infrastructure. Ventilators--we have more and more sick patients, and if the trajectories continue, it is clear we will face a shortage in ventilators. We have to ramp this up much faster than we are doing right now because, otherwise, we are going to have a lifesaving treatment intervention that will not be available for those who need it. Mr. President, we are witnessing shortages in hospital beds overall and shortages of beds in ICUs. We need the Army Corps of Engineers to be working and building out this necessary emergency infrastructure. As we take these emergency measures, we also need to continue to do the urgent work of developing therapeutics and a vaccine. I visited the National Institutes of Health about 3 or 4 weeks ago. It is a national treasure. We are proud to have it located in the State of Maryland along with the FDA. At NIH, I met with scientists who are on the frontlines of developing the vaccine. They are working 24/7. I think this moment is appropriate to salute all the men and women who work at NIH. I hope I never see another budget proposal coming down that cuts the vital medical research that is conducted there and around the country. They are working on a vaccine, and they are working on therapeutics. They are in the process of conducting clinical trials on both. As we have heard reported, they are conducting clinical trials on some off- label drugs. These are drugs that have been developed to try to fight against other diseases. They may not have worked against other diseases. They may work as a therapeutic in this case of the coronavirus, but as Dr. Fauci has warned us, nobody will know until we do a clinical trial and nobody's hope should be unrealistically raised until the evidence is in. On the vaccine front, we have been told by the scientists--by Dr. Fauci and others in his lab--that it will take a minimum of 12 to 18 months to develop a vaccine, and that is much faster than the usual timetable to develop a vaccine. People are working overtime to get this done. Clinical trials have already begun on a vaccine, as well, but 12 to 18 months, while fast for developing a new vaccine, is a long time given the immediate crisis that we face now. So what do we do now on the healthcare front? First, no more mixed messages--let's let the healthcare authorities speak and provide the guidance that the American people need at this time. For far too long, the President of the United States downplayed the crisis, even calling it a hoax at one point. We know it is not a hoax. We know the death toll and the number of sick continues to rise, and we must pull together in a fact-based way to address it. We have to listen to people like Dr. Fauci and others who have called for dramatic social distancing measures. One of those measures we must take is teleworking wherever we can do it. We have seen offices here in the Senate and the House rapidly move toward teleworking and make changes in their offices to facilitate teleworking. Just a few days ago, the President finally said to the country that employers should facilitate telework--a little late, but it was the right message. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of foot dragging in the executive branch itself when it comes to teleworking. I and a number of our colleagues have asked the President to issue an Executive order on teleworking. The President has not done that yet. The head of the Office of Personnel Management resigned a few days ago. This is the person who is in charge of all the Federal Government personnel from an operational standpoint and who resigned in the middle of this crisis. We don't know why. Finally, OMB, or the Office of Management and Budget, issued a directive to agencies saying to maximize telework. But I represent a lot of Federal employees, and I am hearing from lots of them that their agencies apparently haven't gotten the message. The President needs to issue that Executive order, and he needs to do it today. Too many Federal employees are being put at risk because agencies have not taken the time to expand telework opportunities. We need to lead by example, not from behind. Many Governors are leading by example and States are doing that, as are local officials. They are directing the necessary social distancing measures. In my State of Maryland, Governor Hogan has closed schools to prevent the spread of the virus. Restaurants are closed, bars are closed, gyms are closed, and many other gathering places are closed. There are all of those social distancing steps being taken--whether by government directive or voluntarily, by our constituents heeding the calls to take these precautionary measures. All of those necessary steps have resulted in a huge and escalating economic fallout. Thousands of workers have already been furloughed or laid off around the country. Small businesses are being crushed. No customers in the door, no sales, and no income mean you can't pay your employees. It means you can't pay your bills. Whether they are mortgages on your restaurant or mortgages on your home, those bills are still due and coming. So what do we do? What do we do as we approach round 3 here in the U.S. Senate and House, having successfully worked on a bipartisan basis to address rounds 1 and 2? First of all, as for unemployment insurance, because of rapidly escalating layoffs around the country, claims are rising, and we need to rise to the occasion. We need a far more robust system, and, certainly, during this emergency period, we should provide 100 percent wage replacement to workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own as a result of this crisis. We also need to address the totally antiquated aspects of our unemployment insurance system. Some of that will have to wait until after the crisis, but on an emergency basis, we need to address the needs of people who are working as self-employed individual contractors. Let's say you are an event planner, and all of your events got canceled. You are not currently in the unemployment system in most States, probably, but you are no longer getting any income. We need to make sure the unemployment system in this emergency addresses those workers and we need to work on a long-term fix. There is the gig economy. We all know the gig economy is a larger and larger share of our economy. A lot of those workers are not covered. If you are a worker who is in the taxi business or working for one of the other transportation agencies, you are not able to pick up folks at the airport anymore because people aren't coming to the airport, and you are not covered by other unemployment systems. So if it is Uber or others, we need to address those workers and make sure they have wage replacement during this terrible shutdown of parts of the economy. We need to focus on that. Senator Wyden has introduced a bill--I am proud to cosponsor it with him--that addresses many of these issues, but we need to tackle it as part of the bill that we are dealing with right now, because these people are losing their jobs right now. Second is no foreclosures or evictions during this period of time. You lose your job. You got no money. We are working on wage replacement, but we haven't done this yet. In the meantime, bills are coming due. Someone is demanding a mortgage payment. Someone is demanding a rent payment. We need to freeze collections of these payments and defer payments until after the emergency. This is easier said than done, because when we say to a landlord that they can't collect the rent, we also need to say to the bank who loaned money to the owner of the building that they have to exercise forbearance on that loan. That is why a group of us and I organized a letter recently that went to the heads of the financial regulatory agencies--the Fed, the OCC, the FDIC--asking them to use the full extent of their powers to address this issue in a way that deals with the entire economic food chain, from the lenders at the top of the chain to the borrowers at the bottom of the chain, because they are the ones in a position to do it. I just got a letter back last night from the FDIC. I hope to hear from the others quickly, but we don't have time to wait. We should address that issue to the maximum extent in our powers in round 3, which we are working on right now. Third, small businesses and medium-sized businesses are crushed--no customers in the door, no revenue, bills mounting, trying to make payroll. Of course, many of them have already had to lay off some of their employees because their bills are coming due, and they have to try to figure out how to simply stay afloat. A lot of people have said: Well, let's give these small businesses emergency loans. Well, if you think about it, if you are a small mom- and-pop operation, another loan at this point, when there are no customers coming in the door, is simply going to saddle you with more and more debt at the end of this emergency. So extending a loan is, in some ways, for these small businesses throwing them an anchor, because they are never going to be able to recover. They are only going to have more and more debts to pay off at the end of the day when they are trying to restart their businesses and get people back in the door. I have a wonderful local example. Her name is Julie Verratti. She is the co-owner of the brewery and restaurant in Maryland called Denizens. It is a family business. She wrote to me a number of days ago, because she is undergoing exactly these kinds of stresses and pressures. She writes: Small businesses need a bailout right now without delay. The number one thing we need is cash retention and cash infusion. Here are specific actions that will help make that happen: 1. [An] immediate moratorium on all commercial debt payments (loans and credit cards) mortgages, and rents. If you have to choose, focus on SBA loans because small businesses are the only ones that go the SBA backed route. She also says: Immediate moratorium on all evictions and foreclosures. We have to work on that front. I talked about that. But we also have to attack this from all angles. That is why this small business relief is so essential, and it must take the form of grants, so long as the businesses use that money for prescribed purposes: maintaining payroll--whatever payroll may be left--and paying their ongoing debts and obligations. Loans, as Julie says, will not fix this for small businesses. It must be in the form of grants--again, so long as the recipient complies with the terms of that grant. Small businesses like mom-and-pop organizations that already had to lay off employees should not be penalized. They should be eligible for the grants to pay their mortgages to keep themselves afloat. Many midsized businesses are in this position as well. We need to address that because they are in many cases laying off employees in large numbers. Just for a local example, people who live in this area may be familiar with Silver Diner. Unlike Dunkin' Donuts, which works on a franchise model, the Silver Diner owns its different Silver Diners throughout the region. They have 1,800 employees. Their employees, in most cases, have had to be furloughed or laid off because of no money in the door. But the Silver Diner is too big an operation to meet the strict requirements of the Small Business Administration. So, in this emergency situation, we need to provide flexibility that allows us to help some of these middle-sized businesses that are undergoing incredible stress because we want to make sure we help their workers and help them retain as many workers as they can, but also to make sure they can pay their bills when no customers are coming in the door. They need to pay the bills so that, when this is over, they can open up operations and rehire those employees. That is why Senators Murphy, Merkley, and I introduced a proposal yesterday to address these stresses on small and medium-sized businesses, not with emergency loans that they are not going to be able to afford to repay later, but with emergency grants so long as those grants are used for the purposes indicated. That would put these small and midsized businesses in a position to rehire their employees once this economic storm passes through. There are, of course, other major industries that have been hard hit, and we should consider what kind of relief is appropriate for them, like the airlines. We have to be very careful that we don't repeat some of the things that went wrong in the past when it came to helping big businesses. Yes, we would like to help their workers through this storm, but we need to make sure that any funds that go to the airlines, for example, are not used for more stock buybacks that simply help their stockholders and executives and CEOs. The airlines have engaged in a huge amount of stock buybacks in the last year, including after the $2 trillion tax cut that was provided. Instead of using a lot of that revenue to invest in their workers and plant equipment, a lot of it went out the door in the form of stock buybacks, and it would be unacceptable for any relief monies to go for that kind of purpose or to go for any kind of bonuses. In fact, if the taxpayers are going to be making some investments to keep some of these big industries afloat, we should look at what we did in some of the earlier cases later in the game with respect to preferred stock so that taxpayers get fully repaid and we also have a stake in the future success of that investment. One other big area that has not gotten much attention in discussions here on Capitol Hill until the last few days has been the huge needs being faced by State and local governments--States like my State of Maryland, cities like Baltimore City, and other cities and towns in Maryland. They are on the frontlines in many respects, and they are facing huge pressures, which is why we received a letter, an emergency plea from the National Governors Association, just the other day. This is a bipartisan point from Governors Larry Hogan and Andrew Cuomo, and they point out, No. 1, that Medicaid is a major source of Federal help that they use to provide for the medical needs of people in their States, and they are asking for an increase in FMAP. We provided some increase in FMAP in one of the earlier bills we passed, but they desperately need more as the health impact of the virus continues to spread. As you can imagine, transit systems, whether paid for by States or local jurisdictions, are essentially seeing all their revenues dry up as people understandably don't get on those crowded systems. So no revenue means that they are in a world of hurt. We need to provide emergency help. The National League of Cities has also sent us a letter talking about similar kinds of needs, and we need to address those needs in this bill, round 3, and not, as some are suggesting, postpone that to some future date. We don't know when that would be because the emergency is now, and the need is now. Finally, this healthcare crisis has exposed some huge fissures in our society in the kind of safety net that we provide. I am not going to go into the entire list because it is too exhaustive to go through, but I want to highlight a couple of things. We had, in the first instance, the question of whether people are going to have to pay for the coronavirus tests. We all recognize that it is a public health imperative. It would be a mistake to have people have to pay for tests because, if you can't afford it and therefore don't get it, then it not only hurts you, but it hurts other people There has been a lot of discussion about the vaccine. When we develop a vaccine--and we hope we will--that also needs to be available to all Americans without cost. That is something we need to address. Senator Scott from Florida and I have pointed out that a lot of the drugs that are developed by pharmaceutical companies are drugs that benefited from the research at the National Institutes of Health. And who pays for the research at the National Institutes of Health--at NIH? Well, the taxpayer, to the tune of about $40 billion a year. So it makes no sense at all for the taxpayers, who made this big investment in research and development of a drug, to then be price- gouged by the pharmaceutical companies that take the benefits of that good work and then add a big, big pricetag. Our proposal would make sure that where you have that kind of public investment in research and development, you essentially have a process to make sure that there is a reasonable price. Ultimately, when it comes to a public health vaccine, as is being developed now, we need to make sure that it is available to everybody and that nobody cannot afford that. Second, as our schools have been shut in many States, we are seeing the results of the digital divide--just one piece of that--because there are a lot of students who don't have access to the internet, and, therefore, they are not going to be able to engage in distance learning if this crisis continues and schools decide to try to expand distance learning. Why? Because they are not connected to the internet or they don't have a computer at home, so many of us have introduced proposals on this. I have introduced a bill to close the digital homework gap. We are asking the FCC to use emergency authorities to direct funds to buy devices--simple devices--that a student who is not connected to the internet could use to get some reception to be able to do their homework. We should do that right now, but then, of course, we have the longer term challenge of building out that broadband infrastructure to deal with the digital divide. Then there are things we should do to make sure we are better prepared. There is a long list of those, but one of them is pretty simple. Senator Angus King and I have sent a letter to the folks who are finalizing and putting this bill together to require that the office at the White House that had previously existed under the Obama administration--the office that was set up specifically to be an early warning system for a pandemic response like the one we are witnessing-- that that be a permanent office within the White House and that no future President would be able to dismantle that office. We are learning now, the hard way, what happens when you don't have that early warning system and strategic response at the highest levels of the U.S. Government. So those are some of the things we should be doing. As we gather here, America's best minds--our top scientists around the world--are looking to answer questions about the virus and help develop a vaccine. Brave healthcare workers are treating the sick and preparing for many more patients. The people who produce and deliver our food and other essentials, who keep our water, power, and internet on are all at work, whether in their work spaces or teleworking. First responders are on duty, and our military continues to defend the Nation. Marylanders and Americans are doing their part--staying at home, social distancing, finding ways to be together while apart, and, perhaps most challenging for kids, staying busy and not going completely stir-crazy. Teachers and students are embracing distance learning. Families are marking birthdays and other special occasions with e-cards and video chats. Those at the lowest risk are doing what they can to protect the most vulnerable among us. The fundamental decency of all these Americans is shining through. I draw strength and faith from their actions, and I know that, together-- if not physically together--working together, we will succeed. We will succeed if we come together here in the House and the Senate like Americans are working together around the country. If we can do that at this moment, as we approach round 3 of our actions, then I am absolutely confident that the country will have the resources and direction it needs. Let us be as united and determined as the American people. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I am glad Senator Whitehouse made that distinction with respect to the Mueller report. It is true that they did not find a criminal conspiracy, meaning they did not find some agreement between the Trump campaign and the Russians to interfere, but they found plenty of evidence of the Trump campaign's welcoming the intervention from the Russians. Of course, we have more recently seen President Trump spreading the conspiracy theories that were launched by Vladimir Putin that it was not the Russians who interfered in the 2016 elections: Oh, my God. It was the Ukrainians who interfered in the 2016 elections. There is this famous videotape now of Vladimir Putin's saying: Thank God, they are not blaming the Russians anymore. They are blaming the Ukrainians. Translation: Thank God our propaganda is working, and even the President of the United States and some Members of the House of Representatives are parroting our conspiracy theory, the ones that we cooked up. It is really alarming that a foreign government--someone like Vladimir Putin--is so successful in spreading its misinformation within our system.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank the Senator for his questions.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I rise today to once again call upon the Senate to take immediate and urgent action to prevent Russia or any other foreign power from interfering in our 2020 elections. Since the last time I came to the Senate floor to talk about this issue, it has become only more urgent. The clock is ticking, and each day that goes by without the Senate taking action, this body becomes more complicit in the hijacking of our democracy by Vladimir Putin or other foreign powers that try to interfere in our elections. Just in the last week, we have seen significant new developments. We know that the intelligence community briefed the House Intelligence Committee about ongoing Russian interference in our current elections. We also know that upon learning about that briefing, upon hearing that the intelligence community was doing its job in keeping Congress informed about election interference, President Trump erupted upon hearing the news. He did not want the House of Representatives to know what the Russians were up to. We know that soon after that briefing, President Trump unceremoniously fired his Acting Director of National Security, Joseph Maguire, who is a military veteran and a career public servant of great integrity. All of that, we know. And we know that President Trump replaced Mr. Maguire with an Acting Director who has no prior experience in the intelligence community and whose only qualification appears to be to tell President Trump what President Trump wants to hear when it comes to intelligence information or other matters. None of us should be surprised to learn that the Russians are interfering again in our elections. They did it in 2016. That was the unanimous verdict of all our U.S. intelligence agencies. In fact, that was the verdict by the head of agencies who had been appointed by President Trump. That was also the bipartisan finding of the Senate Intelligence Committee. They found that there was some level of Russian interference in the 2016 elections in every State in the country, all 50 States. It was also the well-documented conclusion in the Muller report that brought a number of indictments against Russian operatives of the GRU. Just last November, the leaders of the intelligence agencies--again, leaders appointed by the current President--all warned the Congress and the American people that the Russians and other foreign powers would seek to interfere in our elections in 2020. Those agencies included the heads of the NSA, the CRA, the FBI, the DNI, and others. Last November, all of them warned us about expected Russian interference in our elections. So it really should be no surprise that we learned last week of a briefing in the House where the intelligence community said: We told you so. We have determined that the Russians are interfering right now in the ongoing 2020 elections. That shouldn't be surprising. What is surprising and what is shocking is that the Congress has done virtually nothing to prevent it. Think about that. We were warned in 2016. We have been warned repeatedly since then that the Russians are going to interfere in our 2020 elections. We now have a briefing about ongoing interference and still nothing. What does the President do in response to that information? He fires the head of the intelligence community. He fires him because he doesn't want him to tell Congress what the Russians are doing. Just last month, in February, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued another report. It was another bipartisan report. What they did was they went back to look at what happened in the 2016 elections--specifically in the lead-up to the 2016 elections-- and asked themselves the question: Why, when we learned that there was some Russian interference, did we not notify and alert the country? Their findings were interesting. They found that there were various political reasons. People had concerns about making that information public. In fact, the Republican leader, the majority leader here, was one of those who said: No, we should not inform the American people about that interference. The Senate Intelligence Committee drew lessons from that, saying: We shouldn't be caught once again unprepared. That is what they said in the report just last month, and now we are sitting here today with the intelligence community telling us the Russians are interfering right now as we speak, and we are doing nothing about it. Our democracy is under attack, and we are just pretending things are going on as normal. You would think we would all agree that when our democracy is under attack, we should unify immediately and take every action necessary to prevent that. What could and should we do? We should harden our election systems. We should make sure that voting systems around the country are harder to hack. We should make sure that voter registration information is harder to hack, and we have dedicated some additional resources to that. We haven't done enough, but we have taken some small steps in that direction, as we should. This is a situation in which the best defense is a good offense, and as long as Vladimir Putin and the Russians don't pay any price at all for interfering in our elections, it should be no surprise that they are going to keep on doing it. It is cost-free to them. In fact, they are gaining major benefits, and we see them around the country. They are succeeding in helping to divide Americans against one another. They are succeeding in undermining public confidence in the democratic system. That is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants to do here in the United States and among our allies in Europe and elsewhere around the world. What should we do about it? After we learned of what happened in 2016, Senator Rubio and I introduced a bipartisan bill. It is called the DETER Act. In addition to Senator Rubio and me, we have Republican and Democratic cosponsors. What does the bill do? It is pretty straightforward. It says to Vladimir Putin and other foreign powers: If we catch you interfering in a future election, you will pay a price. That price will be immediate, and it will be severe. So, if you are thinking about what benefits you might gain from interfering in an American election, you will know there will also be a big price to pay. That is the legislation that Senator Rubio and I introduced back in 2017. It has not gotten a vote here in the U.S. Senate. It has not gotten it. It didn't have a vote in the last Congress, so we reintroduced it in this Congress. Now, last fall, when we were taking up the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA, the Senate agreed that part of our national defense meant defending our democracy and part of our defending our democracy meant defending the integrity of our elections. So we unanimously, by a voice vote here in the Senate, said that the Defense authorization bill should include a provision like the DETER Act, that it should include a provision that says to the Russians and other foreign powers: If we catch you interfering in an election, there will be a severe price to pay. When I talk about a severe price, I mean sanctions on their economies, sanctions on their major banks, sanctions on the energy sectors--real economic pain, not imposing sanctions on a few oligarchs, but real pain. That is what the Senate said we should do as part of the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. Guess what happened? When the conferees--when the negotiators--went behind closed doors, the White House essentially told the Senate conferees: Huh-uh, we don't want you adopting these important protections--protections to defend the integrity of our democracy. So, despite that unanimous Senate vote, it just disappeared in the middle of the night from the negotiations over the Defense authorization bill. What do we do? The clock is ticking, and it is time for the Senate to do now what it said it wanted to do when we unanimously passed that motion to instruct the conferees to pass something like the DETER Act as part of the Defense bill, and we are, right now, engaged in ongoing discussions with the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee to try to finally get this bill--this bipartisan bill--out of the U.S. Senate. I hope we make progress because what appears to be the situation is that the White House is essentially putting up a massive roadblock to progress on this matter. It is not our job in the U.S. Senate to simply do the bidding of this President or of any other President. It is the duty of this Senate to protect our democracy against what we know is an ongoing attack on the integrity of our elections. That is why I am here on the floor right now, because we just got the news last week that everything we had been warned about in terms of expected Russian interference in our 2020 elections is coming true. So we have a missile aimed at the integrity of our elections, and the Senate is doing nothing about it. It is unbelievable and grossly negligent to know, in realtime, that our elections are being undermined and to take no action. I just want to say to my colleagues that, if we don't move forward on the bipartisan DETER Act in the coming days and make progress in the coming days, I will be back here on the Senate floor next week, and I will ask for unanimous consent to bring it up. If Senators want to come down here in the light of day and say no--no to bipartisan legislation that protects our democracy--they can do that, but we are going to keep at this, and with every day that goes by, we learn more about what is happening now. I close with what I said before: We should not be surprised that Vladimir Putin is interfering in our elections. He did it in 2016, and we have been told ever since then that he will do it again. What is surprising and shocking and grossly negligent is that this body has not taken action to date to protect our democratic process. We are going to keep fighting until we get that done.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Yes, I would be delighted to entertain a question.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for the question. All I can say is we have seen a pattern from this President. We saw this President, President Trump, in Helsinki a few years ago, standing next to Vladimir Putin, and our President was the one who threw our intelligence community under the bus. He said he trusted Vladimir Putin when Putin told him, Don't worry, President Trump. We didn't interfere in your elections. President Trump said: OK. I think President Putin may be right about our intelligence community.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. He did, and we have seen that pattern over and over again. We just learned of this briefing that took place in the House of Representatives this week. The response from President Trump was not, Oh, my goodness. Let's pass this legislation. It was to fire the guy who was in charge of the intelligence community. So what do you think? It is a mystery to all of us as to why the President is taking this action other than the fact that, of course, he did call on Russia in the last election and welcomed its support. We all saw him on national television when he did that.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I hadn't planned to say anything about the Violence Against Women Act, but given the remarks from my colleague from Texas, let me just say that the bill that passed the House last year is here in the Senate. While it is true that it did not have a majority of Republican House Members supporting it, it did have Republican votes in the House. It expands protections under the Violence Against Women Act, and, like many bills that passed the House, it had very broad support. It is sitting right here in the Senate, along with legislation that requires universal background checks to reduce gun violence, along with legislation to get secret money out of politics and make sure we refresh our democracy and reduce barriers to voting, along with many other bills, including a long-overdue increase in the Federal minimum wage. I would suggest that the best way to find out whether or not it, in fact, has majority support here in the Senate is to let us vote on it, and anyone who wants to vote against it, obviously, has a right to do so. It might well surprise us and pass here, and then we would have addressed a very important issue. S.J. Res. 68 Madam President, I am here today specifically to talk in support of the joint resolution offered by Senator Kaine of Virginia that directs the President to remove U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities against Iran without an authorization from the Congress. The Framers gave Congress, and Congress only, the power to declare war. As James Madison noted, ``the history of all governments demonstrates that the executive is the branch of [government] most interested in war and [therefore] most prone to it.'' The Constitution ``has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature''--meaning in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. The Framers did that because they didn't want one person--and one person alone--to be able to make such a momentous decision for the entire country. They wanted to have a clear check on the President's ability to send our sons and daughters into harm's way. The text of the Constitution cannot be more clear. Article I, section 8 states: ``The Congress''--not the President--``shall have Power . . . To declare War.'' The resolution before us is equally clear. It reaffirms Congress's power and ``directs the President to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for the use of military force against Iran.'' That is what the resolution says. I hope my Senate colleagues see this resolution for what it is: a clear and important reminder to the executive branch of the power granted to Congress by the Constitution. The much tougher votes would come on questions of whether to authorize military action in Iran or any other circumstances. This resolution is a simple reaffirmation of our solemn duty to make these decisions. Whether or not we agree with President Trump's approach to Iran or the decision to strike Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, we should all agree that any decision to go to war should be made by Congress, not by the President alone. The President's ability to protect the United States and our forces from an imminent threat--or any other power granted to the President as Commander in Chief--cannot, and should not, be a blank check, not for this President, not for any other President. Why are we here at this moment, discussing this important issue? Because just a short time ago, we almost stumbled into a war with Iran. And make no mistake, the tensions may not be playing out on our TV screens today, and they may not be making headlines at this particular moment, but it is still a very dangerous and volatile time. The pot is still boiling, and unless cooler heads prevail, it could boil over at any moment. We cannot allow that to happen. We must not fall into another unnecessary war in the Middle East. Certainly, no one should take the United States to war without a full debate in the U.S. Congress and a vote in the U.S. Congress. How did we get here? The Trump administration came into office with one organizing principle to undo everything the Obama administration did: Undo the Affordable Care Act; get rid of the Paris climate agreement; and, of course, get rid of the agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Reversing the policies of a previous President is a campaign slogan; it is not a strategy for the national security of the United States. In the case of Iran, the Trump administration put nothing realistic in its place. The fundamental idea behind the nuclear agreement with Iran was simple and realistic. It recognized that Iran is a malign influence in the region. But it also recognized that a nuclear-armed Iran engaged in malign activities in the region is even worse. If our strategy could contain the Soviet Union, we could also apply a similar strategy to Iran. The agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, known as the JCPOA, came from a deliberate strategy and painstaking negotiations to unite key powers--powers that are often in disagreement--allies, competitors, and adversaries, including Britain, France, Germany, the European Union, China, and Russia. Together, we created and enforced a truly global sanctions regime to bring Iran to the negotiating table to reach an agreement. It was that unity and pressure that succeeded in reaching the agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. It was working. Under the agreement, Iran committed to dismantling large sections of its nuclear infrastructure, to severely limit its production of uranium and plutonium, and it agreed to an intrusive, around-the-clock international inspections. It was compliant with its obligations under the nuclear agreement, and we were succeeding in pushing back Iran's so-called breakout time--the time it would need to build a nuclear weapon. Even this administration agreed with the international community that Iran was complying with the agreement. There was no need to beat the drums of war. Then comes the Trump administration, with many of the same people who got us into the unnecessary war in Iraq, and they took a different path. Instead of working to build on the agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, they tore it up. They alienated our allies who, even to this day, are still working to salvage that agreement. Instead of building on the progress we had made, President Trump launched a campaign of what he called maximum pressure, which has resulted only in total failure. Secretary Pompeo made 12 demands of Iran as part of the maximum pressure strategy, and the administration has not achieved any of them--not a single one. Instead, faced with increased economic pressure, Iran predictably lashed out. Instead of dialing down its malign activities in the region, it has intensified. Tensions have increased. Without any endgame or any sign that this administration will negotiate in good faith--any sign of that--Iran has no incentive to change course. It is long past time that we have a strategy that recognizes simple political geography. We must recognize Iran has a strong hand in Iraq. They are neighbors. They share a long border. They are both majority Shiite countries. Nothing we can do here will change those facts. Instead of recognizing realities on the ground and smartly countering Iran's natural advantages in the region, this administration's policies actually strengthened Iran's hands. In short, it has taken a bad situation and made it much worse. In this very combustible mix, a single spark can ignite a war. That almost happened just a very short time ago. We were on the brink. We learned recently that the original action that set off the sequence of escalation may have been based on a mistake. A rocket fell into an Iraqi military compound where we had U.S. Forces providing some training and took the life of an American contractor in Iraq. The Trump administration claimed that the rocket was fired by an Iraqi militia force backed by Iran. Just very recently, Iraq--our ally Iraq--says that the rocket may have been fired not by Iranian-backed militia but by ISIS. We don't know because the administration hasn't shared any of that intelligence with us. Acting on what may have been a false assessment from the start, we then saw a series of escalatory acts. Then, when things appeared to be cooling down, the President ordered the strike against Iran's top military leader while he was visiting Iraq. I think all of us know that no one in this Chamber is grieving the death of General Soleimani. He has lots of blood on his hands. Make no mistake, killing him has not weakened Iran's hand in Iraq in the long term; it has strengthened it. There have been growing calls in Iraq to expel U.S. Forces, including a vote by Iraq's Parliament, and increasing pressure to throw all U.S. Forces out. What was Soleimani's main objective in Iraq? What is Iran's main objective in Iraq? To get rid of U.S. Forces there. So, in death, Soleimani has gotten closer to his goal of throwing out U.S. Forces than he did in life. That is not a strategic success for the United States by any definition. The administration justified its attack against Soleimani on the grounds that he posed an ``imminent threat.'' At least that is what they said at the beginning. Since then, we have heard a lot of other rationales. They used that particular expression because it has a very specific meaning under international law, and it was the only legally justifiable rationale for ordering the execution of Soleimani. The problem they have is that it just isn't true. Soleimani was a very bad guy. He had blood on his hands. But it is not true that he posed an imminent threat under the definition that is applied in the use of force. We know this because while the Trump administration took a very long time to do it, when they finally provided the Senate with the classified briefing on the situation, it was clear the evidence did not support the claim of an imminent threat. In fact, the information proved the opposite was true. We have been here before. We have seen what happens when administrations manipulate intelligence or mischaracterize intelligence, which is closer to the case we are looking at now-- mischaracterizing intelligence in order to justify a particular course of action. In the case of Iraq, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and many other members of that administration were determined to go to war to ``remake'' the Middle East. They searched for pretexts. They embraced a source called Curveball. They cherry-picked the intelligence to justify their predetermined plan. We know the end of the story. We know the end of that story. Their claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction were fake, but the toll of the Iraq war was very real. The cost in blood and treasure were nearly 4,900 American lives lost, and counting; tens of thousands wounded, and counting; $2 trillion spent, and counting. The amount we will spend caring for those who bore the battle, and their families, will not be fully known for decades, if ever. The death toll of Iraqi civilians is not precisely known but is certainly horrific. The biggest winner from the war in Iraq was Iran--Iran--that had fought in an almost 9-year war against Iraq and was able to take advantage of a weakened Iraq. It just goes to show the many unintended consequences of action not thoroughly thought through. Before we get into another war in the Middle East, whether by design or by miscalculation, let's come to our senses. A war with Iran would do incalculable harm to the United States and to people throughout the Middle East. It will result in huge loss of American lives and the lives of thousands of other innocent people. That is why our Founders did not put the power to take our country to war in the hands of one person. They did not empower the President to take our Nation to war. President Trump has said that article II gives him ``the right to do whatever I want as President.'' We know that is not true. We know that is not what the Constitution says. We know that the Framers vested the power to go to war in this Senate and the House of Representatives, and they did it for a reason. For goodness sake, let us not betray our constitutional duty. Let us, at the very least, have the courage to assert the powers the Constitution entrusts in us. I yield back the time.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, it is the constitutional duty of each Senator to weigh the evidence before us and render a final verdict on the two Articles of Impeachment. On the charge of abuse of power, the House managers have presented overwhelming evidence, a ``mountain of it,'' as Senator Alexander has conceded. For anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear, President Trump undoubtedly used the power of the Presidency to withhold vital, taxpayer-funded military aid from Ukraine to extort its government into helping him in his reelection campaign. He did so even though fighting Russian aggression is in our national interest. And make no mistake, the fact that he got caught before his scheme succeeded is no defense. The House has also proved its case on the charge of obstruction of Congress. President Trump has engaged in unprecedented stonewalling, a blanket coverup that makes President Nixon look like an amateur--not a single document produced nor a single witness. Those who did testify did so despite the President's order not to show up. They raised their right hands and swore to tell the truth. They included Trump political appointees and a major donor to his campaign, individuals who served our country in war, dedicated public servants who took an oath to defend the Constitution. Dismissing them as ``anti-Trumpers'' and ``Democratic witnesses'' is wrong, as were the President's attempts to bully and intimidate them. With the facts proven, the Senate must now ask: Do these charges meet the standard for impeachment? The President claims impeachment requires charging him with a statutory crime, but that is a fringe view with patently absurd results. Their lead lawyer making this argument, Alan Dershowitz, did not hold this view during the Clinton impeachment; nor does Trump's Attorney General, William Barr; nor does Jonathan Turley, Trump's constitutional law expert at the House Judiciary Committee hearing--nor does the authority cited by the President's own lawyers here in the Senate and referenced nine times in their legal briefs. That authority, entitled ``Impeachment: A Handbook'' states that ``the limitation of impeachable offenses to those offenses made generally criminal by statute is unwarranted--even absurd.'' This suggested standard has been roundly dismissed because it leads to ridiculous conclusions--for example, that a President could withhold taxpayer-funded disaster assistance to the people of a State until their Governor endorsed the President for reelection. Even Alan Dershowitz recognized the folly of his own argument, so he switched to saying impeachment requires ``criminal-like'' conduct. Well, the President's actions here have all the markings of criminal- like conduct, including what the Founders would consider bribery and extortion. Moreover, as made clear by the nonpartisan legal opinion I requested from the GAO, the President and his team broke the impoundment control law as part of his overall extortion scheme. In fact, the toxic mix of misconduct we find here--a President corruptly using his office in a manner that compromises our national security to get a foreign government to help him stay in power--is exactly the kind of abuse of power our Founders most feared. Yet the President shows no sign of remorse or regret. His refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing is an ongoing threat to our country and our Constitution. Even as this impeachment process has proceeded, he has continued to solicit other countries, including China, to help his reelection efforts, as he says the Constitution gives him ``the right to do whatever I want as President.'' Let's be honest. President Trump sees the Constitution not as a check on his powers but as a blank check to abuse power, and he will not change. His ongoing betrayal of the oath of office represents a clear and present danger to our Constitution, our democracy, and the rule of law. Those who argue we must not remove the President before the next election ignore the fact that the Founders included an impeachment clause in the same Constitution that establishes 4-year terms for the President. They wrote the impeachment clause for exactly this moment, to prevent a corrupt President from enlisting a foreign power to help him cheat in an election. President Trump has committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the Constitution, and we must use the Founders' remedy. We must find him guilty and remove him from office. Failure to convict will send a terrible signal that this President and any future President can commit crimes against the Constitution and the American people and get away with it. But it is not only the President who has violated his duty under the Constitution. So, too, has this Senate, not because of the ultimate conclusion expected tomorrow but because of the flawed way the Senate will reach that decision. While I strongly disagree with acquittal, that verdict might be accepted by most Americans if reached through a real and a fair trial. But this Senate did not hold a real trial. It held the first impeachment proceeding in our history not to call a single witness or seek a single document. President Trump's former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, offered us important information about the charges against the President. The Senate voted not to hear from him. President Trump said he wanted his Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, to testify at the Senate trial, but then he changed his mind and Senate Republicans voted not to hear from him. I offered to have the Chief Justice make decisions about relevant witnesses and documents, just as impartial judges do in trials every day across America. In fact, unlike in every other courtroom, it preserved the right of the Senate to overturn the Chief Justice's decision by a majority vote. That is obviously a fair process for the President, but every Republican Senator voted against it. And why? Because they are afraid of getting to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They know that, as more incriminating facts come out, it becomes harder to acquit. By joining the President's coverup, they have become his accomplices. While the decision on the President will come tomorrow, the verdict on this Senate is already in--guilty, guilty of dereliction of its constitutional duty to conduct an impartial trial. And because the trial was a farce, the final result will be seen by most of the country as illegitimate, the product of a tainted trial. President Trump must understand this: There is no exoneration, no vindication, no real acquittal from a fake trial. In failing to adhere to the principles of our Constitution and the values of our country, I fear we have done grievous injury to the nature of our democracy. I only hope America will find the resilience to repair the damage in the years to come. I yield the floor.